The Princess & The Frog
by atlimbo
Summary: Park Avenue Princess Blair Waldorf had kissed a lot of frogs, and so far not one of them had turned out to be her Prince. Based on the Grimm fairy tale The Frog Prince. Mentions of Blair w Nate, Chuck, Marcus, Louis. Dan/Blair & Serena/Nate.


**Title**: The Princess & The Frog.  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Gossip Girl  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Blair/Dan, Nate/Serena (also includes: Blair's entire romantic history like woah)  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 785  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Park Avenue Princess Blair Waldorf had kissed a lot of frogs, and so far not one of them had turned out to be her Prince.  
><strong>Author's Notes<strong>: Based on the Grimm fairy tale _The Frog Prince_. Not beta'ed.

Park Avenue Princess Blair Waldorf had kissed a lot of frogs, and so far not one of them had turned out to be her Prince.

There was the Prince who turned out to be a frog - Nathanial Archibald of the powerful Vanderbilts. They weren't royalty but were the UES Court's most valuable ally and financiers. They had the unseemly task of the Kingdom's politics under their golden belts. Nathanial was well raised, handsome, and as dim as a burnt light bulb. Prince Blair kissed him many times over the years, but then the golden boy ran off with Blair's blonde Lady-in-Waiting, Serena, and supposedly the two lived their own version of happily ever after.

Lord Marcus had indeed had potential - not much as a kissing partner, but he didn't turn into a frog and run off with a lowly handmaiden, either. Princess Blair had thought, maybe, her search might be over. From the far away land of England, Lord Marcus was titled, privileged, well educated and _very_ close with his family. Unfortunately for the Princess, the Lord also had his own Lady-in-Waiting. His stepmother, Lady Catherine, that is.

For a while, Princess Blair thought maybe she could see the allure in running away with a commoner as Nathanial had. The Kingdom's most eligible bachelor, owning almost as much land as the Royals, Charles Bartholomew Joseph Bass was also the Kingdom's biggest bad boy. Passionate, dangerous, and mysterious, Blair nearly eloped with him. She would be ruined, of course, and he almost did as such even without an engagement, but the lovely Grimaldi family stepped in just in time. Their heir, Prince Louis, would marry Blair and the world would forget the brush with scandal that was Chuck Bass.

Prince Louis was a good man. Slightly older than Princess Blair, he was kind, dutiful, and predictable. Queen Eleanor and Kind Harold (as well as their consorts Roman and Cyrus) could not have been happier with the match. The Princess, on the other hand, found herself frequently bored, longing to run her Kingdom for herself - not as the Lady on the arm of the future King. Princess Blair had ambition, talent, and intelligence, and she'd always assumed she'd use them. The UES would flourish under her rule as Queen B, her Ladies would fawn over her, and she would influence style and politics and business. But with Prince Louis, she had little need to do any of that - he'd been trained from birth to run his Kingdom, and now he'd do the same with hers.

All of these worries, her conflicting emotions over her engagement, lead her to seek solace in an odd friend. The old partner of her former Lady-in-Waiting, a Court minstrel named Daniel. She didn't even know his last name, if commoners even had last names, and yet she found herself wandering the Kingdom with him aimlessly, meeting other commoners and learning from him about the ways of her subjects. She traveled to areas of the Kingdom she'd never before stepped foot, and Queen Eleanor remarked more than once that she seemed to be changing. She cared more about the subjects, had better considered opinions and projects. She spent her time on education rather than ambition and this strange minstrel, this frog in unfashionable clothing and unseemly state of excitement. Could it be that the undesirable toad, a man she went to for comfort absolutely because of his limited status, was the one she'd needed all along? The thought that he might be her true Prince in disguise - instead of the other way around, a prince who became a rude frog, or a love born of rebellion, or a man who'd behave so inappropriately as to fall into consort with his step-mother. The thought consumed the Princess, forming worry lines on her perfect skin, a frown on her perfect lips.

And so one evening, she tired of it all, and told the frog to kiss her. Minstrel Daniel was surprised to say the least, especially the way she told him to: "Frog, come kiss me." And he did, and the Princess of Park Avenue and all the Kingdom of New York was surprised to find, when she stepped back from his embrace, that he'd indeed transformed. Whether in reality or to only her own eyes she couldn't be sure, but there were butterflies in her stomach, stars in her eyes, and he was a frog no more, but a handsome, caring, intellectual equal who looked upon her as if she were an oasis in a desert. Smiling and leaping into his arms, Princess Blair knew that he was her partner, to rule the Kingdom justly and to live happily ever after.


End file.
